by Al Fray
“But since I didn’t—I mean they missed me so I guess they’ll—”
“Try again? I think so, son, and you’d better be giving some thought to that suggestion I made once before.”
“You mean leaving River City. Run?”
“‘He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day,’” Domms quoted. Then he got up and went to the window. “If you stay we’ll do our best to protect you, Anderson, but I believe they’ll try again, and again, until they score or we get a break and smash the ring.”
“Ring?”
“It’s beginning to look like one. And if it is, lad, you better be making a decision. What’s so important about being a bank teller in River City? There are other towns, other jobs, and the bank will be more than reasonable in the matter of separation pay.”
“Wait a minute. Is this your idea or the bank’s?” I asked.
“We worked it out together. You were a great help to me a while back and I appreciate that. Which is why I’m telling you, if this is an organized outfit, well, they just can’t afford to let you live. They have to make sure that the man in the street is afraid to go into court against them, Anderson, and to do that they’ve got to nail your hide to the wall. If not today, then tomorrow, and believe me, lad, you’d better run from that tomorrow.”
“A hell of a piece of advice from a captain of police,” I said bitterly.
Domms nodded slowly, his lips tightly shut. “Put it this way, son. I’m doing my best to clean up River City and I’ll do a damn sight better with you somewhere else and alive than I will with you here and in my way.”
“Maybe there’s another solution,” I began, but when he looked up I stopped. It wouldn’t help to tell him that maybe the best way to clean up River City would be for him to take over coaching the high school football team and let the board of commissioners pick the next homicide captain on ability instead of position. There wasn’t any point in making another enemy in town; I was already well supplied.
But within a week I began to realize that things weren’t going to be the same for me in River City. I didn’t feel I could ask anyone for a ride and at the end of the day I noticed that the employees ahead of me on the way out of the bank hurried their steps to leave plenty of space just in case bullets began to pour toward the entrance, and those behind me found excuses to delay their exit until I was well clear of the door. It was, I thought bitterly, a little too much like those advertisements for bath soap or a breathless kind of toothpaste, and there’s a limit to how long you can live that way. On Friday I told Mr. Harwell that I’d take the severance pay. He handed it to me as I left the bank, wished me well, told me again how sorry he was, and then glanced nervously up the street as I left the building.
A railroad ticket would have left a trail and so would the bus. No point in that. I packed a few necessities into the pockets of a leather jacket, told my landlady to give the things that remained to Goodwill, slipped out to the freight yards, and was on my way.
A vast feeling of relief washed over me as I climbed the rungs of that freight car—relief from something deeper than the trouble I was leaving behind. Bank hours are good and the work easy but I had often found myself bored with the endless scrawling of figures passing through my hands, the tedious balancing of cash against entries. I wasn’t exactly proud of the reason I was leaving but I was glad to be on the road.
And while the new life wasn’t always easy, at least it was never dull. I had scrapped a little in the service; I was willing to fight my way. Part of my lard melted away in the Kansas wheat fields, some of it burned off under a broiling sun in the Dakota harvest, and the rest I lost in California’s hot, dry Imperial Valley. I began to look less like Swede Anderson who once smiled through the first teller window at the River City National Bank and more like what I had become—just another drifter. I played a lot of pool; I worked at whatever came along.
And then one night in the Portland railroad yards an overly excited bull swung his billy first and asked questions later. His club left me with a broken nose and a small but obvious scar over the left cheekbone.
Ironic, Captain Domms would have called it. For the second time a scar was the turning point in my life, for this one pointed out with striking clarity the changes four years had brought—and the possibility of returning to River City. Tan and a hard hundred and sixty, the scar, the nose, the even more obvious change in attitude toward living—it would be hard to recognize the man I now was as the overweight and bespectacled bank teller. A single artificial transformation was required, a simple twenty-minute session with the henna bottle and Swede Anderson had red hair and looked more like an Irishman.
Now, standing under the culvert, I was back in River City once more; and if my return was less than triumphant it at least had purpose. I knew why I was here; I knew what had to be done. Flipping my cigarette back under the concrete arch, I climbed the embankment, checked the highway carefully, and hiked toward the business district.
Chapter 2
Lilac bushes were rushing the season, their perfume heavy on the cool morning air. It was good to be back, good to walk Main Street once more. Big and expensively lawned residences lined the wide street and farther on was the downtown business district of River City. Between were the shoestring enterprises—the small plumbing contractor with a living room that doubled for an office and a garage stocked with pipe, the one-man real estate offices, the little stores. I passed the Tyler Trucking Company and a sign on the modest brick bungalow said Driver Wanted. I slowed my step.
Eventually I hoped to drive for the River City Cab Company, and for a very special reason, but since I couldn’t admit to knowing the layout of the town yet I could hardly start in a hack. This looked as good as anything; Bill Tyler had always seemed like a nice enough guy. He used to come into the bank now and then, a widower nudging fifty, a big tan fellow with work-scarred hands, a heavy voice, and a smile in his eyes. I turned into the driveway, then stood aside to let a truck with a bald man at the wheel go past. Around in back I saw a boy of perhaps thirteen washing down the only piece of rolling stock in the yard, an eight-ton semi with two-speed axle and a lot of miles behind her. I grinned and stepped into the glass-enclosed porch that served as an office.
“I’d like to see Mr. Tyler, please,” I said.
“Mr. Tyler?”
The girl at the desk looked up at me and touched a pencil to her chin. She was dark-haired and maybe twenty-eight, and she wore a simple house dress but it fit just right in all the places. She hadn’t forgotten the lipstick or the comb, though a still steaming coffee cup at her elbow indicated early hours and a rushed breakfast. I was sure I’d seen her a time or two around town.
“Did you know him personally?” she asked at last.
Did I know him. My first mistake and some hasty smoothing over was in order. I shrugged and smiled down at her.
“I don’t know him at all,” I said easily. “I’m looking for a job and the sign out front said ‘Tyler Trucking.’ I sort of figured the owner’s name would be Tyler.”
“It is, I’m Gail Tyler. You drive?”
“That’s right, Miss Tyler.”
She reached for a pad of paper on her desk. “Your name, please?”
“McCarthy. Warner McCarthy,” I said glibly. It was Irish enough for anybody and there was a convenient background in case I needed one. We’d worked together in the cotton belt, Mac and I, and we had knocked around for a while. We’d fought our way in and out of more than one bar. He was a scrapper, that boy, and I learned a lot from him before he ran out a string of bad luck that ended in a broken-bottle brawl behind a small cantina just south of the border. Mac came out second best. A couple of months ago, that was; and now I picked up his name for sort of an encore because he was just the kind of man to make a big hit with the tough side of River City. And anyone who’s worn the navy blue has learned to answer to “Hey, Mac,” so I shouldn’t have any trouble in that direction.
&nb
sp; “And where have you driven, Mr. McCarthy?” the brunette was saying.
“California. The Imperial Valley,” I said shortly. This was a small outfit. One idle truck would knock big holes in the week’s profit and the sign on the front of the building said all too clearly that drivers were hard to come by in River City. I didn’t have to go through any inquisitions about how long I had worked and for what company and could I give references.
“Look,” I said, “you need a driver and I want a job. If you’re wondering whether or not I can handle a truck, let’s climb into that rig the boy is washing. If you’re writing a biography I’ll be on my way.”
She stiffened momentarily and swallowed once, then put her pencil down, slid the desk drawer open, and handed me an ignition key.
“You can work the semi around the yard and get used to how it handles. I’ll be out in a few minutes, Mr. McCarthy.”
“Mac,” I said, and took the key and went toward the truck yard.
The boy put down his polishing rag and jumped off the truck. Mentally I moved him back along the age scale a year, twelve, say, with the Tyler features showing in his face. I made what I hoped was a subtle bid for information. Dangling the key, I nodded toward the rig.
“Your mother wants me to fire this one up. Is it ready to roll?”
“My sister, you mean.”
“I’m McCarthy,” I said, before he had a chance to figure out that he’d been conned, “and you?”
“Bub Tyler.” He put a proud hand on the big front fender and said, “This baby is a little slow to warm up but she runs real good.”
“All right,” I said, and swung into the cab. The beast was no stranger; I’d herded one not much different for a couple of months out of Vegas, and when I had the motor turning over on this one I let her idle until she settled down to a smooth even purr. Then, checking gauges, I slipped into gear and moved forward a few yards, stopped, backed down, and began to put her through the paces. Driving a semi is like riding a bike—it takes a while to learn but you never forget and when I had this one under control and felt at ease I pulled up the alley a bit, climbed down, and walked back.
“Stand here, Bub,” I said, indicating a spot about eight feet from the wash bucket he’d been using. A few yards back I drew a line with the edge of my shoe and then went back to the rig again. Shifting into reverse, I brought the big truck in between a gas pump and a G.I. can half full of empty oil tins, put the wheel hard over and maneuvered the van back between the boy and his bucket, and stopped. When I got out to check, the line I’d drawn was right under my tailgate—a reasonably good job of truck handling—so I went over to the cab and cut the ignition.
By the time I’d lit a smoke Gail Tyler was coming toward me. No slacks, but somehow I got the feeling that no matter what she wore she’d look one hundred per cent feminine. The total effect was nice all right and I remember thinking that something like this should be getting into six thousand dollars’ worth of Cadillac instead of a truck, but she swung up into the cab and I slid behind the wheel.
“I’m ready for my examination, coach,” I said, smiling at her. “Which way to the proving grounds?”
“Toward town. To the right, that is, and about twenty blocks. When we get to Juniper Street turn left.”
“No strain,” I said, and we rolled out into the street. When we hit Juniper I made my turn, then raised a questioning eyebrow.
“The Department of Motor Vehicles is just ahead. We’ll stop there.”
“You’re letting them do the checking?”
“You’ve had plenty of hours in a truck cab, Mr. McCarthy. That much I could see from the office window; as soon as we get you a license to drive in this state you can go to work.”
“Oh? And how do you know I don’t have one?”
“Do you?”
“No, but—”
“Pull into the ramp on the right,” she said, and a few minutes later I stood at the counter and marked crosses in the little squares on the test blank. The fingerprinting was only a minor annoyance since they wouldn’t be run through unless I got myself involved in trouble sometime. When the man climbed into the rig with me we made a short road test and that was no problem either. When we came back to the department’s office Gail Tyler handed me a five-dollar bill. “For what?” I asked.
“The license will be four dollars. You probably haven’t had breakfast so get something to eat on your way back to the office. I’ll have your run scheduled and Bub will go with you for a day or two to help you find the places.”
“But this—”
“Is an advance on your first day’s pay; we’ll see that you have enough for food as you go along and wherever you decide to stay, have the landlady phone me about going good for the rent.” Something in her soft blue eyes said she was about to even the score on that crack I made about writing a biography.
“You are not the first man to drop off the freights and take a few days’ work driving a truck, Mr. McCarthy, but you do handle a rig better than most. I—I hope you’ll stay longer than some we’ve had.”
She turned up the street and left me holding the five-dollar bill in my hand. I grinned after her and pocketed the five. There was over fourteen hundred bucks in the money belt under my shirt, and I thought maybe, just maybe now, I could have lent her money to make payments on some of the rolling stock; but if it made her happy to think I was down to less than coffee change it was all right with me.
The first haul Bub Tyler and I made was a load of television sets from the depot out to Cal Silverwood’s TV Center on the other end of the business district. At least twice each week for several years Cal had stepped up to my window at the bank. We were pretty good friends and he usually said something like “How’s the Swede today?” or maybe “Hello, Svenska,” but now he looked past me and flipped a thumb toward his stock room.
“We’ll stack ’em along the wall,” he said, and went to get a couple of boys to help unload. Grinning, I set about the business of trucking cartons out of the van.
Our second run was after lunch and consisted of a heavy piece of farm machinery going to a small distributor in a little burg twenty miles out. I’d already learned that Bub was old Bill Tyler’s kid, that Bill had died in a truck accident over a year ago and now Bub and his sister were struggling to make a go of the business. From the way Bub sounded, the going was rough indeed—something about a shortage of drivers. Tyler Trucking had four trucks and three drivers, all old fellows who had driven for Bill Tyler many years. Arno Nalchik was senior man, lived over the truck garage, and drew one hour overtime daily to check the rigs and see that they were ready to roll each morning. Gail depended heavily on Arno, or so it seemed.
On the second run the talk drifted to baseball and Bub told me about the Cubs, a Little League team on which he played first base—when he wasn’t riding the bench.
“This time on the sidelines,” I said, smiling down at him. “What’s wrong? Can’t hit?”
“I hit all right, but I miss too many in the field.”
“Maybe need more practice.”
“I work out all the time, Mac,” Bub said, his face a study in seriousness, “but I just don’t have the hang of it, I guess. Are you a ball player, Mac?”
“I’m a trucker,” I said, grinning. “When’s the next game?”
“Saturday. But the team’s holding a practice this afternoon before dinner. I sure hope we make it back in time.”
“We’ll try,” I said, and put a little more weight on the throttle. The city limits sign fell behind and I settled back for a relaxed run; but before we were more than a mile into open country a new Lincoln pulled alongside and a young guy next to the driver flagged me toward the gravel shoulder. I glanced at Bub and saw fear washing over his face.
“They’re from the union, Mac,” Bub said.
“Aren’t the other drivers in the teamster’s local?” I asked quickly.
“Sure they are. They’ve been driving for Pop from befor
e I can remember but we—I mean the union won’t let us—”
“Won’t let you what?” I asked, and fed a little gas to the engine. I wanted to know as much as possible before I brought the rig to a stop. “I thought the unions usually work through the employer. I mean they ought to have phoned your sister if they had a problem.”
“This isn’t a union,” he said bitterly, “it’s a racket.” Tears of anger and frustration were in his eyes and he had all he could do to keep the rain from falling.
“Like?” I asked.
“They won’t send us any drivers and they won’t let us hire men and—” Suddenly the boy’s lips clamped tightly together and the look in his eyes said that he was afraid he’d talked too much already. The big car was beside me again now, and the young guy rolled down a window.
“Pull that rig off on the gravel,” he yelled. He was a little tender in years to be as tough as he was trying to sound.
My hands were damp on the wheel as I pulled off the concrete but this was still a lucky break because there wouldn’t be a better time or place to do what had to be done. When the truck came to a stop I turned to Bub.
“Stay in the cab,” I said.
I climbed down and walked toward the two men who had stopped up ahead and were coming my way. One was in the late thirties, a bit overweight and walked with an arrogant swing to his stride. Hard brown eyes; dark stubble already breaking through his morning shave. The other was about twenty and he looked the same out of the car as he had in—trying just a little too hard to be tough.
“I’m Vashon. Of the Teamster’s Union,” the older man said. He didn’t put out a hand, just nodded toward his companion and added, “Link Mancusso.”
“McCarthy,” I said, and dug out a cigarette. Since friendship wasn’t going to be the keynote of this little session I didn’t bother to pass the smokes around.
“Got a union card, McCarthy?” Vashon asked.
His dark eyes watched me carefully as he waited, but since he obviously knew I wasn’t in the union, I let him hold the phone while I struck a match and lit the smoke, shook out the flame and stepped on the ember. Then I shook my head.